Volume 20, Number 3, Fall 2013 Books People · important books on New York City families and social...

Books&PeopleVolume 20, Number 3, Fall 2013

IN THIS ISSUE

Book RecommendationsThe Dark Side of the Stacks

PAGE 9

In the BuildingI’m pleased to be writing from the far side of our completed renovation of the Children’s Library. It has more space for books, family reading, and kids’ programs, as well as beautiful new furnishings and carpeting, a fresh coat of paint, and improved lighting throughout. The Whitridge Room, adjacent to the Children’s Library, is also sparkling and refreshed with better tables for writing and group meetings. The west wall features special shelving for the Ethelyn Chase Poetry Collection, which we look forward to adding to the Library holdings in 2014. More information on what’s available on the Third Floor is on page 4. I sincerely appreciate the patience and good wishes of families and all our members during the renovation.

From the Head Librarian

Saving an author’s reputationPAGE 6

Staff changesPAGE 5

The new Third Floor PAGE 4

Books & People Fall 2013 - PAGE 2

From the Head Librarian continued

We all know that there is nothing like browsing in a real library. To wander the stacks of the New York Society Library is one of the great pleasures of the 21st century.

Our Annual Fund makes this possible. Contributions help us to purchase 5,000 new books each year. They also provide for the mainte-nance of the building that houses the stacks that are filled by the staff that acquire, catalog, shelve, recommend, circulate and return the books to the stacks for the next reader to discover.

Books are our past, present, and future. Please support the Annual Fund today. You can do this by mail or by credit card online at www.nysoclib.org/members/ support-library. Thank you for your contribution.

The Pleasures of Browsing Completing the Third Floor is a particular reminder of the importance of young

readers in today’s Library. On October 27, we were honored to present authors Laurent de Brunhoff and Phyllis Rose at our official Children’s Library reopening, “Babar Visits the Library.” Welcoming people to the event, I noted the generation of young faces in the front row, eagerly anticipating hearing the great author and illustrator Mr. de Brunhoff read his stories and do an on-the-spot illustration of his most iconic character. Ms. Rose, who collaborates on the Babar books with her husband, is bringing out a unique book of her own, based on her reading in this Library—The Shelf: Adventures in Extreme Reading (Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 2014). Watch our listings for a special event on this book next year.

In the Book WorldAs a Canadian with roots on both sides of the border, I was proud to hear of Alice Munro’s Nobel Prize for Literature. It was an inspired choice both for the strength of Munro’s body of work and as an encouragement to short story writers throughout the world. Ms. Munro’s story collections fill close to two shelves of our Stack 6 fiction collection and circulate frequently. Perhaps the Nobel Prize news will inspire you and me to look at some of her titles or those of other great short story authors from around the world such as luminaries Anton Chekhov, Edgar Allen Poe, Flannery O’Connor, John Updike, Katherine Anne Porter, Ray Bradbury or Mavis Gallant. Dear reader, let me recommend four favorite collections of the short form—short stories and novellas—includ-ing Alistair MacLeod’s Island: The Complete Stories (2000), Allan Gurganus’ White People (1991) or Local Souls (2013) and Daphne Du Maurier’s Don’t Look Now (1971). Though most think of Du Maurier as a novelist, her short stories are remarkable.

A Library FriendThis June I was saddened to learn of the passing of Jerry Patterson, an NYSL user for fifty years, a Goodhue Society member, and a man I considered a friend since becoming Head Librarian in 2006.

Jerry the writer published many important books on New York City families and social history, including The First Four Hundred: Mrs. Astor’s New York in the Gilded Age (2000), Fifth Avenue: The Best Address (1998), and The Vanderbilts (1989). Jerry the professional appraiser was also a great help to the New York Society Library, providing numerous appraisals of our rare book collection free of charge. His first appraisal was in 1965, his last in 2006. At Jerry’s memorial service at Calvary Episcopal Church, his closest friends spoke of his good taste, read-ing acumen, kindness, and fairness. He loved reading mysteries, listening to opera, and seeing every production

Our friend and appraiser Jerry Patterson


Under the extended charitable IRA legislation, if you are 70½ or older, you can make gifts to charities like the New York Society Library of up to $100,000 from your IRA tax-free until December 31, 2013. This opportunity applies only to IRAs and not other types of retirement plans. These gifts cannot be used to pay for member-ships. Please consult your advisors for other limitations.

Thank you for considering designat-ing the Library as a beneficiary of your IRA. For more information or to let us know that you are making a gift, please contact Director of Development Joan Zimmett at 212.288.6900 x207 or email [email protected].

of the musical Jesus Christ Superstar. The Third Floor office collection will be a permanent home for a few of Jerry’s reference books (other copies are available for circulation), including I.N. Phelps Stokes’ The Iconography of Manhattan Island, 1498-1909 and James Grant Wilson’s The Memorial History of the City of New-York. Jerry would be proud to know “his working copies” of these books will be put to good use.

A Literary Gift Jerry would have appreciated knowing that the Library continues to receive special gifts of art and books from time to time. We now own the famous draw-ing of Ralph Waldo Emerson by David Levine (1926-2009). Levine’s iconic, expressive drawings of American and world luminaries graced the pages of the New York Review of Books from 1963 to 2007. The Library extends many thanks to Byron Dobell for the donation of Levine’s Emerson. He was inspired to make the gift when he learned that Emerson spoke at the Library’s building on Broad-way and Leonard Street in 1842. The drawing is now on permanent display in the main hallway of the Fifth Floor.

Emerson is a longtime favorite of many Library members. It reminds me that we are a library of readers and writers, but it is reading that is the lifeblood of the NYSL’s mission. To that end, I look forward to sharing an evening at one of our many Members’ Room author events or chatting with you about your reading at the Reference Desk.

Many good wishes to each of you for a healthy and safe Thanksgiving and holiday season.

Mark Bartlett Head Librarian

Byron Dobell with his donated drawing of Ralph Waldo Emerson.

Use your IRA to Make a Gift to the Library


The New Third Floor

What’s ThereOur large, carefully selected children’s collection—picture books, fiction (new and classic), nonfiction, audio-books, and young adult books.

A beautiful new children’s room filled with picture books and expanded seating for family reading and events.

One computer terminal for children’s use only.

A unisex restroom with changing table and water cups.

A renovated Whitridge Room open for general use and events. Laptop use is also permitted. Handsome new shelving has been created on the west wall for the Ethelyn Chase Poetry Collection. Please check the calendar on the door for event times. (Registration is required for events.)

Best of all, three children’s librarians (Carrie Silberman, Randi Levy, and Brandi Tambasco) who look forward to answering your questions, suggesting great books, and offering

events for children from birth through eighth grade.

What’s Not ThereComputer terminals for adult use. Computers are available in the Reference Room (Library catalog only), on the Fifth Floor, and in Stacks 1, 3, 5, and 6. Netbooks can be checked out from the Circulation Desk for use anywhere in the building except the Members’ Room.

The Library is delighted to announce the reopening of our fully expanded and renovated Third Floor.

We look forward to welcoming families back to the Children’s Library, and readers and event

attendees to the Whitridge Room. A few things to keep in mind:


Randi Levy rejoined the staff as a full-time Children’s Librarian in early August. Randi holds a Master’s in Library Science from Queens College and previously worked in the Cataloging and Children’s departments from 1999 to 2008. Since 2008, she has served as a school librarian in Ridgewood and Brooklyn.

Susan Vincent Molinaro became a new Public Services Librarian in September and will be seen often at the Circulation Desk. She holds a Master’s in Library Science from Pratt Institute.

Since February, Doreen Pastore has been creating beautiful designs for our major print publications such as newsletters and the Annual Report. Doreen graduated from Parsons School of Design with a BFA in Communications Design and has previously worked for Columbia University and in the publishing world.

Peri Pignetti has moved into the Catalog Librarian position previously held by Endang Hertanto. Peri joined the Library staff in 2007 as a Circulation page and became a Bibliographic Assistant in 2008. She holds a B.A. in Italian Studies from the University of Vermont and a Master’s in Library Science from Queens College.

Syed A. Rasool is our new Head of Systems. Syed holds a

Master’s in Computer Science from Pace University and a Master’s in Library Science from Queens College. He has fourteen years’ experience with technology in the Queens Public Library system. Syed looks forward to meeting members around the building and at technology sessions and workshops.

Patrick Rayner, lately Head of Circulation, has moved up-stairs to become Acquisitions and Circulation Assistant. His well-known skills in reader’s advisory make him an ideal person to help Head of Acquisitions Steve McGuirl select books for the collection, and he will continue to be visible at the Circulation and Reference Desks.

Brandi Tambasco, who you may know from the Circulation Desk and interlibrary loan, also stepped into a Children’s Library role, becoming Children’s and Interlibrary Loan Librarian at the end of August. Brandi joined the staff in 2006 and earned her Master’s in Library and Information Science from Queens College in 2010.

Kathleen Fox joined the staff as Senior Library Page in October. Members will see her giving tours, reshelving books, and staffing the Circulation Desk. Kathleen comes to us with a BA in Anthropology from the State University of New York at New Paltz.

Old Friends, New FacesThe Library has welcomed both new and familiar staff members in the past few months.

Left to right: Susan Vincent, Brandi, Patrick, Peri, Syed, Doreen. Randi top right, Kathleen bottom right.


When members of our Cataloging Department prepare newly acquired books and materials for the collection, they are guided by “authority records” provided by the Library of Congress in coordination with the Online Computer Library Center (OCLC). College, research, public, and special libraries rely on authority records to maintain accurate and consistent data about authors, subject fields, and other information in their catalogs.

Libraries are disciplined spaces, and the discipline that defines a good library is embodied in the catalog. Nowadays the Library’s record-keeping is digital, but our old wooden card catalog remains in the Reference Room, a symbol of the orderliness of the collection, card by card. This orderliness may be an aspect of the Library that members have in mind when they describe the NYSL as an “oasis in the city.” Mix-ups and maelstrom outside, order within.

Alas, orderliness can be misleading. For now and then authority records are wrong; books wind up misfiled, an author denied his/her identity, a subject field snubbed or misunderstood. Heavy human consequences can follow even from a clerical slip. Fortunately, corrections can be entered, if submitted with adequate documentation.

Here are two cases of mistakes we detected that led to changes in catalogs everywhere. One case resulted in the resuscitation of an author declared dead by the catalog. The other case cleared the reputation of a writer unfairly tainted. The latter case comes with a bonus of intrigue involving a secret meeting on the Victoria Embankment between an American counterspy operating under an alias and a British agitator engaged in undermining civic order not only in his own country but in the Middle East as well.

I came upon the first case in 2010, in my voluntary project for the Library’s Acquisitions Department; I suggest scholarly and academic press books for the collection. According to our catalog, Joseph Frank, the distinguished Dostoevsky scholar, was dead. But I knew the guy was alive; at the time he was an emeritus professor of Slavic Languages and Literature at Stanford. In a memo to the

Head of Acquisitions, I had recommended the recently published one-volume edition of Professor Frank’s multi-volume Dostoevsky biography.

I called the error to the attention of Laura O’Keefe, Head of Cataloging and Special Collections. Laura checked the standard sources and verified that the authority record entombed Professor Frank prematurely. She uploaded our correction, and in due course the record was changed, with credit to the New York Society Library for its contribution. The esteemed scholar was brought back to life. (Professor Frank died earlier this year.)

The second case was a tough one. It was sparked by an inquiry to the Cataloging Department from

a perspicacious Library member who was puzzled by an entry in the catalog identifying G.F. Green, an English novelist (In the Making) and short story writer, as the edi-tor also of The International Jew. The latter is an abridged, one-volume version of Henry Ford’s anti-Semitic outpour-ings published on a weekly basis from 1919 to 1927 in the

A Feat of Disambiguationby Jules Cohn

Professor Joseph Frank (1918-2013), distinguished author of a five-volume biography of Fyodor Dostoevsky.


Dearborn Independent. It was a propaganda publication distributed by the Ford Motor Company through its dealerships (which were required to display it in their show-rooms). From the outset Laura and I were intrigued by the possibility that there might be two G.F. Greens. Could the authority record have fused their identities?

Biographical information about the novelist was easy to find. He was born in Derbyshire in 1911, and educated at Cambridge, where he met and became a lifelong friend of Michael Redgrave. Vanessa Redgrave is his goddaughter. His writing was admired by Elizabeth Bowen, E.M. Forster, and, later, Alan Sillitoe. In the Second World War he served in the British armed forces in what was then known as Ceylon until 1944, when he was charged with homosexual ‘offences’, court-martialed, and sentenced to two years in prison. On leaving prison he suffered a breakdown, but with psychiatric help he recovered and resumed his writing career. He published children’s stories and several more novels before he died in 1977.

It seemed unlikely that this G.F. Green would have had time or inclination for what would have been a laborious (and revolting) task of combing through the 91 tracts of bigotry originally published as a four-volume set in the late 1920s, in order to produce an abridged version of the automobile magnate’s diatribes. Was there another G.F. Green? Had the LC record, which buried Professor Frank alive, erred again, this time leaving a moral taint on the hard-won reputation of an innocent writer who had endured grievous personal ordeals? The hunt was on for a G.F. Green #2.

Biographical information about this other Green was hard to come by. Wikipedia, not known for either nuance or dependability, provides ample information about the book and its inflammatory message, but nothing definitive about its elusive editor. The usual Google search as well as schol-arly digging in JSTOR and Project MUSE led nowhere, until I found a footnote in an academic journal citing a few para-graphs in Cairo to Damascus (1951), a book in our stacks by John Roy Carlson. Carlson was a well-known journalist in the 1940s; another of his books, Under Cover (1943), was a bestseller. He made a name for himself—literally, for his real name was Arthur Doumanian—beginning in the 1940s, investigating and reporting on pro-Nazi activity in this country and abroad. All accounts indicate that he was inde-fatigable in his efforts to expose anti-democratic activities, especially hate groups, in this country and Britain.

Carlson died in 1991, in the library of the American Jewish Committee in New York, still engaged in his research. I am indebted to him for providing the evidence I needed to establish the existence of two Mr. Greens and thereby crack this case open.

G.F. Green #2 worked in advertising and public relations before becoming editor of the Independent Nationalist, a periodical dedicated to “a Briton’s Britain.” A tip from a Swedish source led Carlson, who presented himself as a “Jew-hater” and “anti-democrat” in order to connect with people similarly disposed, to approach #2 for a meeting. The latter declined a suggestion to meet at the Press Club in London—“I’m afraid of surveillance by MI5 [British Intelligence]”—but agreed to a walk and a conversation along the Embankment.

The results of the conversation were conclusive. As reported by Carlson, Green #2 boasted of his exploits stirring up trouble for members of minorities, and (in 1948!) referred to Britain as “a Jewish concentration camp.” In a follow-up letter to Carlson, he characterized himself as an advocate of “activities...fully, openly and efficiently directed against...world Jewry.” He had ties to Gerald L.K. Smith, the notorious propagandist and provocateur of the period (whose outfit distributed copies of the infamous Protocols of the Elders of Zion), and to “We, the Mothers,” a female “hate-contingent” [Carlson] in Chicago, and similar bigoted groups and organizations elsewhere. While he was spewing propaganda and editing Henry Ford’s materials, Green #1 was overseas

The abridged, one-volume edition (1949) of Henry Ford’s anti-Semitic outpourings, edited by the elusive G.F. Green.


in the armed forces, serving his prison sentence, and then suffering a nervous collapse.

What began as a bibliographical research project became a cause with moral meaning. Authority records, relied on not merely for orderliness, but also for higher values of accuracy and responsibility, had failed at the job; a cataloging error had profound consequences on a writer’s reputation. Our joust with the bibliographic records repaired the damage. From now on, two G.F. Greens will be listed in bibliographic lists and library catalogs everywhere.

Incidentally, the NYSL owns only one of Green #1’s books, but worldcat.org, another activity of OCLC, lists his other

works, all of which are available for borrowing through interlibrary loan. The book edited by Green #2 is also listed, but finally (and fittingly) alone.

On this occasion, too, the NYSL’s contribution is reflected in LC and OCLC records. Our accomplishment is referred to by the Library of Congress as a “feat of disambiguation.”

Thanks to three ace catalogers, Laura O’Keefe, Matthew Bright, and Matthew Haugen, for light in the labyrinth.

JULES COHN IS EMERITUS PROFESSOR OF POLITICAL SCIENCE AT THE CITY UNIVERSITY AND A FORMER MEMBER OF THE JOINT CENTER FOR URBAN STUDIES, HARVARD-MIT.

A Feat of Disambiguation continued

The original edition (1952) of the novel by the esteemed G.F. Green.


Book RecommendationsLibrary staff are always happy to help you find your

next great read. Recommendations on many topics can

be found on our website, from the left-hand sidebar or

at www.nysoclib.org/collection/recommended-books.

The Dark Side of the Stacks: True CrimeAlthough “true crime” is a fairly recently coined term, the genre itself has centuries-old roots encompassing broad-sides, penny dreadfuls, execution sermons, murder ballads, and works like Defoe’s True and Genuine Account of the Life and Actions of the Late Jonathan Wild (1725). Despite its reputation—not altogether misplaced—as the cynical work of hacks cashing in on our sordid desire to read about fellow human beings run amok, many exceptional works of journalism and nonfiction literature have been produced within the genre, distinguished by riveting storytelling and exhaustive research in the quest to understand our species’ seemingly limitless capacity for cruelty and destruction.

Perhaps contrary to its historically genteel image, the Library has an extensive collection of material catering to members’ longstanding interest in the dark side. The 364 call number range in Stack 3, which holds most of our crime-related nonfiction titles, includes nearly 1,100 books, ranging from the 19th century to the present. Our historic pamphlet collection includes several examples of the lurid murder confessions and trial reports that were very popular in the early 19th century.

Some of the Library staff’s favorites from our collection of true crime are described below. We hope you find something here of interest, but be sure to check what sits next to your selection on the shelf. You never know what you might find.

True Crime: An American Anthology | edited by Harold Schechter (2008) 364.1T With an author list that ranges from Cotton Mather to Dominick Dunne on the 1990s trial of the Menendez Brothers, this compulsively readable, expertly compiled collection from the Library of America chronicles the un-derbelly of American history. In addition to fine work from well-known journalists, there are surprise entries from the likes of Benjamin Franklin and Abraham Lincoln, as well as literary luminaries such as Hawthorne, Twain, Bierce, Drei-ser, Mencken, Hurston, Thurber, and Elizabeth Hardwick—names that do not bring to mind the drugstore and bus-depot paperback racks usually associated with the genre. A

few other notables and recent favorites in the stacks include: Edmund Pearson’s Studies in Murder (1924); Killer on the Road: Violence and the American Interstate by Ginger Strand (2012); John Bartlow Martin’s Butcher’s Dozen and Other Murders (1950), particularly for its chilling title piece; and Reporting at Wit’s End: Tales from the New Yorker by St. Clair McKelway (2010). Although perhaps not strictly in the genre, Malcolm Braly’s convict memoir False Starts: A Memoir of San Quentin and Other Prisons (1976), is highly recommended, and Robert K. Elder’s Last Words of the Executed (2010)—which is a compendium of just that—makes for morbidly fascinating reading.

—Steven McGuirl, Head of Acquisitions

We Are Anonymous: Inside the Hacker World of LulzSec, Anonymous, and the Global Cyber Insurgency | Parmy Olson (2012) 364.1O You don’t need to be a computer nerd to find this tale of cyber-crime gripping. Olson investigates the story—and


the psyche—of the loose association of international and anonymous hacktivists responsible for pranking and protesting institutions as diverse as PayPal, Visa, and the Church of Scientology. Olson’s excellent pacing drives the underlying narrative about the hunt to find and outwit the Anons, and her clear language even manages to make bots and distributed denial of service attacks comprehensible to admitted non-geeks like myself.

My true crime interests, however, are not limited to the cyber variety. I gravitate toward art crime and art forgery as well. Here are two I highly recommend: Stealing the Mystic Lamb: The True Story of the World’s Most Coveted Master-piece by Noah Charney (2010), and The Forger’s Spell: A True Story of Vermeer, Nazis, and the Greatest Art Hoax of the Twentieth Century by Edward Dolnick (2008).

—Carolyn Waters, Assistant Head Librarian

Little Man: Meyer Lansky and the Gangster Life | Robert Lacey (1991) 92 L 2957L A level-headed businessman (unlike his colorful friend and foil, the manic Bugsy Siegel), Meyer Lansky rose through the ranks of Arnold Rothstein’s 1920s empire to make money in almost every area of 20th century East Coast culture, from jukeboxes to delis to, of course, gambling. Lacey’s clearly written book, awash in the feel of classic Jewish New York, deplores Lansky’s methods but admires his business smarts and perseverance. The surprising account of Lansky’s crew turning to defense of the city during World War II is a particular treat. Throughout, Lacey marvels at how this titan of crime was also “just another schnorrer” who liked to have his buddies over to watch The Godfather (in which he is immortalized as Hyman Roth).

Also recommended: Rothstein: The Life, Times, and Murder of the Criminal Genius Who Fixed the 1919 World Series by David Pietrusza (2003). Damon Runyon’s “The Brain,” Rothstein set the standard for 20th-century American organized crime. Tough Jews by Rich Cohen (1998). A very readable and dangerously funny overview of the Jewish gangsters and their world, and how they served as both cautionary tales and role models for the author.

—Sara Holliday, Events Coordinator

The Bobbed Haired Bandit: A True Story of Crime and Celebrity in 1920s New York | Stephen Duncombe and Andrew Mattson (2006) 364.1D Nine decades before the Barclays Center set root in Northwest Brooklyn, the area was playground to another controversial idol of consumer culture: 20-year-old

laundress turned “gunmiss” Celia Cooney. Desperate, discontent, downwardly mobile—and with a baby on the way—Celia led husband Ed on a series of brazen, fur-coat-clad armed robberies that eluded the police and politicos and captured the public imagination. Their crimes were decreasingly lucrative, though increasingly copied, until a botched Final Take just around the corner from Ed’s child-hood home led to their Florida flight and subsequent capture. “Our Story is a story of stories,” local academics Stephen Duncombe and Andrew Mattson state in The Bobbed Hair Bandit: A True Story of Crime and Celebrity in 1920s New York, a remarkably researched and punchily narrated com-posite of dialogue, court reports, editorials, illustrations, photos, and political cartoons illustrating how muckraking journalists and their Jazz Age readers “interpreted, recorded, and instrumentalized” their headline heroine—alternatingly posited as a depraved and drug-addled flapper, female Robin Hood, super crook in drag, pretty girl gone wild, and

Book Recommendations continued


Dickensian martyr—until ultimately forgetting her altogether. —Brynn White, Systems and Digital Projects Assistant

Lost Girls: An Unsolved American Mystery | Robert Kolker (2013) Lobby Nonfiction Robert Kolker knows the problem his book faces. He admits it in the title: no one has been arrested for the murders described in Lost Girls: An Unsolved American Mystery. Even though readers are denied the pleasure of knowing whodunit, Kolker spins an extraordinary tale of the women whose lives led them to their killer’s door. In May 2010, Shannan Gilbert was reported missing. She had been working as an escort and disappeared outside a client’s house near Oak Beach, Long Island. Although Shannan’s remains were never found, seven months into the search police uncovered the remains of four other women, buried in burlap not far from where Shannan disappeared. Kolker’s triumph is the recreation of the lives of these women, escorts all, who follow similar paths from broken homes to the Craigslist ads where their killer found them.

—Patrick Rayner, Acquisitions and Circulation Assistant

Fatal Vision | Joe McGinniss (1983) 364.1M This account of the conviction of Army surgeon and Green Beret Jeffrey MacDonald for the 1970 murder of his pregnant wife and their two daughters is a personal favorite. It was published thirty years ago and has been the subject of some controversy: In The Journalist and the Murderer (1990), the writer Janet Malcolm accused McGinniss of misrepresenting himself to MacDonald in the course of his research, and books by filmmaker Errol Morris (Wildner-ness of Error, 2012) and Jerry Allen Potter (Fatal Justice, 1995) have attempted to refute Fatal Vision’s account of these brutal killings. But McGinniss’s analysis is thorough and persuasive, and has stood the test of time. —Laura O’Keefe, Head of Cataloging and Special Collections

Manson: the Life and Times of Charles Manson | Jeff Guinn (2013) Lobby Nonfiction Forty-four years have passed since Charles Manson and his “family” went on the infamous killing spree that left at least one rising starlet, a Hollywood hairdresser, and an heiress to the Folgers coffee fortune dead. More than 200 books have been written on the story since. What sets Guinn’s apart is the depth of its research, new interviews with actual family members, and the fact that it begins long before the wild-eyed guru arrives in San Francisco to seek followers. When Manson comes to California during the Summer of Love, he is 33, an ex-con set on becoming the rock star he knows he is. The bizarre events that come next—a recording

session with a Beach Boy, the move to a dilapidated dude ranch with a group of hippies convinced that he is Jesus—lay the groundwork for the horrific August 1969 murders that contributed to the end of the hippie era.

An excellent companion to Guinn’s biography is Ed Sanders’s loopy The Family: The Story of Charles Manson’s Dune Buggy Attack Battalion (1971). Obsessively researched, The Family benefits from Sanders’s interest in the case as it unfolded. Sanders occasionally seems to enjoy his subject matter a little bit too much, but the result is a guaranteed fun and startling read.

—Katie Fricas, Circulation Assistant/Events Assistant

53 East 79th StreetNew York, NY 10075

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One More PictureYoung members at the October 27 Children’s Library reopening celebration, “Babar Visits the Library.”

Volume 20, Number 3, Fall 2013 Books People · important books on New York City families and social...

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